The latest entry in Etsy's Handmade Portraits series profiles Sylvester Ayek, an Iñupiat hunter and carver who grew up on King Island, 40 miles off of the Alaskan coast. There, he learned the traditional Iñupiat ways of subsistence hunting and carving ivory and wood. Today, he continues to sell his artwork to (sylvesterayek.etsy.com) to supplement his subsistence lifestyle,......read more

The first of two vids for "Left Hand Free" is a smorgasbord of summer cliches

In the post-MTV era, indie bands are lucky to have a label that backs the making of a video. "Left Hand Free," a bluesy number from Brit trio alt-J, has not one but two videos, the second dropped this week to coincide with a new push for radio play. Featured here is the first clip, released late in the summer, which may or may not leave you pining for summertime fun. The video, directed by Ryan......read more

Moody Montreal indie pop act Young Galaxy have shared a new video for "Hard To Tell," the latest single off of their 2013 LP, Ultramarine. The band enlisted friend and artist Carine Khalifé (who worked with the band previously on their "Blown Minded" video) to create a storybook animation using painted brushstrokes. The animation feautures a parade of animals marching through the forest in......read more

80,000 bees and a handful of humans collaborate on honeycomb sculptures

In what is being called the "3B printing project," creative agency The Ebeling Group deployed 80,000 bees to create two sculptures from beeswax: a Dewar's bottle and a bust of Dewar's founder John Dewar. Since bees build honeycomb inwards, the team had to start with inverse scaffolding to give the insects a framework to work with. A rubber tube connected to the neck of the bottle provided a......read more

The new video for "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards," the second single from Tame Impala's landmark Lonerism LP, carries on with the swirling, psychedelic visual aesthetic on full display in the Aussie band's previous video. This time, however, directors Joe Pelling and Becky Sloan take a handmade approach, individually making 1,000 plasticine collages that are......read more

Hand-crafted art meets natural history dioramas meets stop-motion animation in this amazing video assembled by Brooklyn-based animator Hayley Morris. Inspired by the found sounds contained on Silfra, the album from Grammy-winning American violinist Hilary Hahn and German modernist composer Hauschka, Morris applied a similar approach to her visuals for "Bounce Bounce."
"I really wanted to capture......read more

"Small Hands," the lead single off Keaton Henson's Dear LP, is a bittersweet affair, full of mournful lyrics and beautiful boo-hoo melodies. Director Joseph Mann perfectly matches the visuals to the vibe, with this somber video featuring handcrafted animal puppets (courtesy of Blinkink puppet honchos Jonny & Will) coming to life to tell a heartbreaking story of love and loss. Never knew......read more

Created by Brooklyn filmmaker Keith Ehrlich, the excellent web series Made By Hand profiles various pockets of artisinal activity around New York City. The latest episode departs from the black-and-white look of the first two episodes, with a beautifully shot, sun-soaked view of a rooftop beekeeping operation in Brooklyn.
Local farmer Megan Paska has witnessed beekeeping as it......read more

Here's a newish animated video for "Pirate's Life" by We Cut Corners from Polish directing duo Katarzyna Kijek and Przemysław Adamski, who created the entire thing by hand using markers on paper. They say the process was "As simple as it gets," but it doesn't look remotely simple to us. They also made this making-of video, which is pretty funny. ...read more

UK Artist Matt Box just dropped the first installment of his Acid Drops series, a collection of hand painted skate studies that "aim to psychedelically capture the individual styles of influential skateboarders." First up, Jason Dill, one of the skate world's most eccentric rippers. He may not have known it at the time, but Box employed the age-old animation technique of rotoscoping to......read more